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Co-Produced by:
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Sting
Kim Turner
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Release Date:
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December 12th, 1995
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Availability:
Regular U.S. release.
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Awards:
Academy Award Nomination, 1995.
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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
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Sabrina: (John Williams) Many people criticized
director Sydney Pollack for even trying to remake the classic original film
from Hollywood's Golden age. While Julia Ormond is certainly no Audrey
Hepburn, Harrison Ford looked even more out of place in the picture. Part of
the difficulty in remaking Sabrina was the forced modernization of
the story. There's far less romance inherent in the surroundings of today's
world compared to that of the original film. Master composer John Williams
was brought on board the project to help smooth over that transition and
provide a musical link to the Golden Age. Williams was coming off of his
longest break from film scoring in a long time, deciding not to take a
scoring assignment in 1994 and instead work on concerts and a variety of
other projects. Undoubtedly, 1993 had been his strongest year in a long
time, with Jurassic Park and Schindler's List both destined
for greatness, and Williams would have a difficult time living up to
heightened expectations in 1995, even by his own standards. Indeed, both of
his 1995 film projects, Nixon and Sabrina, were critical
failures, and his music for these films has fallen victim to neglect by even
many of Williams' own fans. In the case of Sabrina, Williams was
returning to age he was fond of reproduced in his very early years of
composition. Long before his large-scale orchestral efforts, Williams
provided shadows of the Golden Age in his barroom jazz compositions. Pollack
would request this romantic sound for the modern Sabrina and Williams
responded with a score straight from that era. Built upon Williams' favorite
source of romance, the piano, Sabrina is an elegant, classically
performed score unlike anything from the composer in the ten years before or
after. But was it the right move by Pollack and Williams? Perhaps not, for
this sound would fall victim to the same criticism as the film.
There is no doubt that, technically speaking, Williams'
Sabrina is a superior piece of composition, especially for those who
perform on piano. The piano is the source of emotion in every cue, ranging
from the harmonic, rambling performances of the title theme to the fluid
continuation of similar ideas in the underscore. However, like the film, the
romance seems out of place and forced into a mold that doesn't fit a modern
representation of the story. Whether you hear the music in the film or by
itself, Williams tries too hard to place Sabrina in the past, losing
the authenticity of the elegance that he could have offered had he allowed
that piano to perform more modern rhythms and themes. It could be argued
that several of his 1960's scores are more genuine than Sabrina in
their performances; the modern ensemble also fails to swing with the
appropriate dancing steps required to accentuate the excitement of love in
the story. In other words, Williams wrote a functional score, but a flat
one. An example of elegance lost exists in the suite format of his title
theme, which introduces the orchestra after a lengthy piano solo, and during
the orchestral swells, the piano continues to meander hopelessly in the
background, nearly ruining the tonality of the music. The underscore itself
is uninspired by romance or seemingly anything else, going through token
motions with a muted trumpet in one cue and an accordion for Paris in
another. The complexity of the continuously wandering piano continues as it
did in Williams' early 1970's scores, often mirrored by a single woodwind
instrument. The "Nantucket Visit" cue breaks the monotony of the underscore
for some brief comedy relief, but when the film and album return to
Williams' arrangements of classic Golden Age dance tunes, the time placement
of the music is once again placed in flux. Sting's voice is too modern for
Williams' "Moonlight" song, further confusing the era of this score. On
album there is only about 25 minutes of original Williams material to be
found, with arrangements, songs, and reprises comprising the rest of its
length. For fans of both Golden Age romances and Williams' modern orchestral
efforts, Sabrina will seem just a touch out of place and, like the
film, lacking in a convincing expression of elegance. **
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Viewer Ratings and Comments:
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• 1. Theme from Sabrina (4:30)
• 2. Moonlight (5:20) - performed by Sting
• 3. Linus' New Life (2:45)
• 4. Growing Up in Paris (3:02)
• 5. (In the) Moonlight (Instrumental)* (2:59)
• 6. Sabrina Remembers/La Vie en Rose (1:42)
• 7. Sabrina Comes Home (4:14)
• 8. Nantucket Visit (2:31)
• 9. The Party Sequence (10:53) - suite of Golden Age instrumental songs
• 10. Sabrina and Linus Date (2:40)
• 11. How Can I Remember?* (2:50) - performed by Michael Dees
• 12. Sabrina's Return to Paris (2:22)
• 13. Theme from Sabrina (Reprise) (5:23)
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* not contained in the film
Insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
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